You know what winds me up? What winds me up is when you have a brother so stupid he thinks stamping on snails is clever. And then some poncy grammar-school kid comes along and has a go at him, and you have to defend the little git because he’s your brother. Result? Total humiliation. You end up on your arse skidding about in snail juice. And your idiot brother – that’s the one you were trying to rescue in the first place – he’s laughing at you along with all the rest.
I don’t do bullies, but sometimes you can see the attraction. It would be so nice, just once, to hold Davey down in the dirt, sit on his face and fart. A good long wet one. The release of tension … bliss.
It looked like it was going to be a good day too. That was the day I made my first friend at Statside. And not just any friend, either. If I told you I’d been rescued by a girl, you’d probably think I was an even bigger wimp than you first thought. But when I tell you that that girl was Billie Trevors, and that she beat up the entire Riley gang to save me, you’d shut your trap. Wouldn’t you? You would. If you had any sense you would, anyhow.
I know – it sounds too good to be true. Who would have thought that me, Roly Poly Rob, would be mates with the hardest person in the school? In the world for all I know, because no known human has ever met anyone tougher than Billie Trevors. She’s hard, but underneath she’s really nice. We have loads in common. We like the same music. We laugh at the same things. We’ve only had a couple of conversations, but I really think she likes me. She’s not like the rest of them here. She doesn’t go along with things just because everyone else does. She’s the sort of person who’ll decide if she likes you or not just on how you get on together.
I wish …
This is such a hard school. They’re all chavs _ it’s like the style police. If you’re not like them, they think you’re some sort of pervert. Kids get beat up for listening to the wrong music or wearing the wrong clothes. Just not being them is, like, an insult. At my old school in Manchester, girls used to like me. Girls like big fellas. But here, if any girl even looked at me, she’d get beat up by the girl chavs for being a pervert! What’s that about? Martin Riley had his girlfriend Jess slap me around the other day. He didn’t even need to hold me down. I just stood there while she slapped the side of my face until it turned red. Then she spat on my jersey and I had to say, Thank you, Jess.
Well, not any more. Billie Trevors is my mate. See Jess slap me now. If that Snailboy had known the kind of people I hang out with, he’d have been on the floor licking up snail juice with his dirty, snaily little tongue. And he’d have been happy to do it too.
Another thing that winds me up is when you miss the bus – because Snailboy got on your bus with his snail friend and you were too slow to hop on after them. And so you have to walk home on your own with snail juice all over your trousers. And then it rains. And you get soaking wet and cold and miserable and you arrive at the front door feeling like a complete idiot because that’s what you are.
And there’s shouting coming from inside the house.
A lot of it, a lot of life, you can’t do much about, but I’d found a great way of coping with the shouting. I didn’t even have to think about it any more. I turned up my iPod as high as it goes, so that the awesome sound of Metallica filled me up, top to toe, pouring out of me, like shining beams of light, out of my ears, my mouth and out of my eyes, for all I know. Then I opened the door and walked into the house on a wave of sound.
Metallica solves most problems. You don’t have to be angry when Metallica is playing. You don’t have to be scared. You don’t have to worry. They do all that for you. When I listen to Metallica, I am God.
I waded through the music, past the living room and I arrived at the fridge. The fridge is my friend. You need friends in this world. It wasn’t being all that friendly today. I have this dream where I open up the fridge and it’s full of cake and Coke and snacks and trifle and chocolate and blocks of cheese. You name it. In the dream I’m thin and that shit Philip is at the bottom of a deep hole. I’m going out with Billie. We’re making out in the fridge. And Metallica is beamed directly through into my brain.
Bliss.
I took out a big slab of cheese and a pint of milk and I waded on upstairs, through the sea of sound. I got myself settled down at the PC and found myself my favourite heavy-metal site, Dead Friends. Dead friends are the best friends. A skeleton never calls you fat. He never slaps you round the face and makes you say thank you. He is most definitely not a chav. Best of all, he likes the same music I do.
I looked at the pictures and started to rap out the drums on my desk. It felt sooooooo good. That’s my dream – to be a proper metalhead in a heavy-metal band playing my heavy-metal drums. It might have come true, once upon a time, when I still had my drums. It was so cool – I was so cool, back in the day. I played every day, every spare moment I had I was on the kit, banging away the pain, drumming in the light. I even had the beginnings of a band with my mate Frankie. I was on drums, he played guitar and sang. It was the coolest thing in my life, playing death metal with Frankie back in the day.
Not any more.
There’s a reason why I don’t have any drums. That reason is called Philip. He’s the stinking pile of dog turds who took my drums away. Philip’s done some bad things to me, but that was the worst. I’ll never forgive him for that. He didn’t just take away my drums – he took away my dreams. No one should ever be allowed to do that to you. Now I have no drums and no dreams – but I still have the music. I’ll always have the music.
That’ll do for now. It’ll have to.
There was a noise far in the distance behind me. I turned round; it was Davey. My heart sank. His mouth was opening and closing. I couldn’t hear a thing, but I knew exactly what he was saying.
I jumped up, grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him round and marched him out of the room. He was twisting and pushing but Roly Poly had a grip on him. He was still yelling, but I was yelling and so were Metallica so I couldn’t hear a word.
‘Out!’ I was bawling. ‘No! No! Out …’
‘GGGRRRRRRRRXXXXXXXOWWWWW,’ roared Metallica.
‘ ’ said Davey. ‘ , Rob!’
I had him out into the corridor and nearly at his door when he managed to pull one of the earphones out.
In came the world. Screaming and shouting and yelling and tears. Philip and my mum.
‘Can we have a game, please, Rob? Can we? Rob, please … no, don’t, Rob …’ Blub blub blub, the little shit.
‘What can I do? What can I do?’ I roared. ‘What can I do? What can I do?’
I shoved him away and he went down on his bum in his room. I stuck the earplug back in and ran back to my own room. I turned the sound up and tried to concentrate, but it was ruined. I sat there for a few minutes longer, but it was no good.
I got up and went back down the landing.
He was on his bed, bawling his little eyes out. No, that’s not fair. He doesn’t do that any more – he’s too old. He holds it in better now.
‘Come on, then. Game on,’ I said.
He didn’t look at me, but he turned up in my room a few minutes later. I have Metallica. He has me. That’s the way it is.
I got out the Xbox and hooked it up to the TV. Davey sat on the bed. He found my iPod and stuck one of the earphones in.
‘You are going to get so battered one day listening to this stuff,’ he told me.
He’s right. If Martin Riley and the chavpack find out I listen to Metallica, I am dead. For them, listening to metal is one step down from being a nonce.
‘No one will ever know,’ I told him. I sat down next to him. The screen came on. ‘Kill All Enemies,’ I said, and we started to play.